Category Archives: Musings

I have been MIA for way too long, I know. I couldn’t think of what to write and I wasn’t even prepared to bullshit you or myself through something meaningless. They say time is the best answer to everything (they don’t, I’m just making it up as I go along) but that’s all I needed. I got my mojo back.

When we were little, there was always this curiousity towards the opposite sex. There was the whole “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours” kind of thing. There was this air of innocent intrigue, keyword being innocent. From year 4-6 of primary school, the whole class used to chill together, we were all friends, good friends, friends that MSN’d together at 6pm until dinner was ready. I personally think I skipped the “boys have cooties” phase, I was born hormonally charged. I’ve always liked boys; I didn’t shy for them nor them me either. I think I had my first kiss when I was 8. I remember being so blasé when we’d play truth or dare as young’uns when first kisses were imagined by others and cherished on the top shelf of the mind of others, kept with all the much-loved memories. I didn’t see it as something monumental. It was just a thing. It was almost something I could do without.

Did your mum ever give you that talk that scared the shit out of you when you were younger? Did she ever tell you touching a boy could get you pregnant? I am so lucky for a mother who didn’t wreck my mind like that. I don’t think I knew the actual mechanics of sex until I was 11/12. Boarding school made sure I knew every single excruciating detail.

But what I’m saying is, when we were young, heterosexual friendships weren’t something that was out of the blue. They didn’t threaten anyone, really. Seeing a young boy and a girl being friends didn’t necessarily raise eyebrows as it does now. Drama evolves with time. It may have been around when we were prepubescent and it is ever so present now that we are grown but it’s just so much more in your face. The fact that you’re not meant to have a genuinely friendly friendship with a member of the opposite sex is fiercely shoved down your throat. You are almost taught to believe your platonic relationship is destined to become tinged by attraction eventually. Just wait on it.

For instance, let’s say your girlfriend/boyfriend has a best friend of the opposite sex. Wouldn’t you want to know everything about this supposed best friend; be everywhere when your significant other and said best friend are together and most importantly, know whether they are having/had sex or not? It is just impossible to have peace of mind when your lover has an opposite sex friend who was there before you. There’s no way you would allow for such a friendship to form when you are in the picture, no way in hell.

Once we reach a particular age, I’m going to say 16 as that is the legal age (stay safe, kids) even though I witnessed this and have lived this since I was 12 – platonic relationships between the sexes do not exist. You cannot have a friend who is a boy/girl and just leave it at that level. There is always that underlining tone of sex being whispered in the background even if you know in your heart that you’re not necessarily attracted to the person. I remember I was texting someone I had just met and we were in that phase of asking questions and once I got past the standard enquiries such as how old are you, where are you from, what university are you studying in, I went straight for “do you have a girlfriend?” even though I knew I wouldn’t ever be with this person in any way shape or form. Or the time I was texting someone whom I had again just met and less than an hour into our text-versation and establishing common ground, he was asking to meet with a wink emoji. The wink emoji. It’s almost primal, dare I say it. Maybe it’s our bodies’ way of ensuring we find a mate and by doing so, we are psychologically programmed to find a potential, secure said potential, establish then eliminate competition. Occasionally and unknowingly, you just catch yourself on the first step of this process and ask yourself “wait what? I don’t even like him/her, what the hell am I doing?”

I guess with age, what is important to me changes. I’m getting old, I am 19 years of age. Before I can blink, the –teen will be a distant memory. With age comes maturity; comes change that I can’t fend off even if I wanted to. My attention has shifted to what matters now but might not matter in 10 years. Tastes have changed, tolerance has changed. Things that mattered, don’t. Things that I couldn’t think about without feeling a huge swirl of emotion only make me smile now. Every little thing that happens to me is a lesson to be learnt, wisdom to be acquired, another gem to be kept. The drama evolves but it will always be around. Maybe when I’m 29, I’ll look back at this phase in time and laugh too.

I’m still reading Americanah and I just finished this bit in the book in which the white Americans kept asking the protagonist, Ifemelu, whether they were pronouncing her name properly and how it was such a beautiful name and all that. The book then went on to talk about integrity in keeping one’s God-given accent and Nigerian name and that’s where I paused and had a rather existential moment.

We all know my name is Georgina, it is the name my parents chose for me, it means “farmer”, it’s the female variation of George which is actually Greek. But, it’s weird because, I’m Nigerian. Growing up, I used to ask my mum why I had such a name, not that I don’t like it but all my fellow Nigerian peers have Nigerian names as their first names. She would tell me that was the name they liked and it suited me but of course, as I got older, I asked again and my mother told me it was to make my life in the diaspora easier.

Secondary school in Nigeria, however, wasn’t necessarily easy with such a name. I know for a fact that I made people uncomfortable just with my name: it was too hard to pronounce, too foreign, too pretentious. I cannot count the number of times I’ve told people my name for them to ask me where I’m from ethnically and then see the abject confusion spread across their face almost immediately. Some people even think I’m lying, they tell me “No, for real, tell me your real name” or “but you said you’re Nigerian, what’s your name?” as if I’m one of those fake people who come to the UK and completely reform themselves, with an equally as unrecognisable accent in tow. Don’t even get me started on the way people butcher my name, the mispronunciations would be hilarious if they weren’t being directed to me. I have to choose which name to use, depending on what, who and where. It’s not confusing, I’ve grown to be adaptable and to answer to either of my many names. There was just something about that book that struck a chord – does me having an English first name make me a cheater? Does it reduce my sincerity, my Nigerianess, my integrity simply because I do not bare the pleasure and sometimes burden of having a Nigerian first name?

Nowadays, I feel like I have a point to prove by assuring people that I do have a Nigerian name, just to fit in. It’s absurd, I know. I’m not the first Nigerian with an English name as a first name but come on, the ones that you know have nice and easy names like David and Joshua or Sarah, they have Bible names, not peculiar names that you don’t hear everyday.

I grew up feeling an English first name was the way to go, it set you apart and it was what I would do for my own children: they would reap the benefits of having an easy to pronounce, simplistic name, to ensure their survival in the Western world. My brother and I are the only ones out of all the cousins from my mum and dad’s families to have English first names, isn’t that saying something?

With all this being said, it still doesn’t ensure a smooth ride. I was in Starbucks with my friend after our exam yesterday, ordering Frappucinos and standard, the barista asked “You want cream?” “Yes.” “Your name?” “Georgina.” She paused and glanced at me, as if I was actually fucking with her. I proceeded to spell it, “G-E-O” and she put her hand up, motioning for me to stop and she says “G is enough.” Like, bish what?

I can’t help but feel a slight pang of betrayal towards the motherland when I really think about what my name is. I feel like I’m letting my peers down, like I’m taking the easy way out by having an easier to understand name whilst they have vowel-rich, syllable-overloaded, beautiful, lyrical names with the most wonderful meanings whilst I’m just the farmer. It doesn’t make me want to start using my second name on a first-name basis because, well, better the devil you know. It just makes me think. And no, I don’t know what names my future children will bear, I haven’t decided which burden I will bestow upon them yet.

I always say writing is therapeutic because it’s never let me down. There is only so much you can vocalize to another human being and besides that, their emotions will get in the way of whatever is it you’re trying to convey. They will judge, they will give their two cents, they will have a response that 9 times out of 10 won’t be what you want to hear or what you even asked for. That’s why writing is so needed: it’s just me and a blank canvas that won’t betray me or rebut anything I say, it will retain my words, hold them for me, display them back to me, speaking louder and wiser than anything else.

I say this because I keep a diary. I’ve always dabbled for as long as I can remember but it wasn’t until I was carted off to boarding school around 8 years ago that I took journal-keeping seriously, almost religiously. Again, my diary wouldn’t betray me. I could write about anything, about anyone and that would be it. To today, I still write in a diary, a little less frequently as before but this blog serves as another diary for me nowadays.

I’m always typing little things whenever they hit me, for posterity’s sake. Memory fails but once it’s been stored somewhere, that is it, it’s final. I was going through my laptop aimlessly, nostalgically and I found this document titled “Time” and you know what it was? I had written down my entire experience with my ex. Everything, from our first date, to our arguments, to what the sex was like, to when he broke my heart, every little thing. Everything that I could remember, I had written it down. Call me crazy, call me overly-attached, call me whatever. I am an investor: I invest my time, my feelings, my entire being into things or people that I love. Being in love with him was brand new, we experienced a lot of firsts together. I had never felt how I felt with him with anyone before and I know that at the time I wrote all of it down, I felt I would never achieve that feeling with anyone else. I read it over and I could feel the hurt through the screen, it was that tangible. I just had to share some of it, simply because it was like a gift from past me to now me: a me who is forever wanting and will, one day, be rewarded and I felt like that little narration of my first love was something that would benefit future me, one day. It could serve as a reminder of what was and what will never be, to keep me going and keep me hoping and to remind me that the love I have (hopefully) is all the more worth fighting for just so I won’t have to write something like this ever again.

“Unhappiness is a gulf. It is that patch of thin ice that you inevitably walk over during winter. It is clenched teeth during dreams that end as nightmares, sleepless nights that can only be ended by crying yourself to sleep. It is being unable to look at yourself in a mirror for months. It is not having the self-love or even self-belief that your picture is worth being taken. It is looking sullenly out a window or at nothing in particular while in deep thought wondering where the hell you went so horribly wrong. I was consumed with sorrow because I believed I just wasn’t good enough. I don’t want to say I was depressed but I didn’t smile with my eyes for almost 2 months. I watched the video tape of Christmas that year and I didn’t smile wholeheartedly once. Love is unrelenting in every aspect: when you’re in it, you are in it. There’s no side-stepping it or half-hugging it. When it breaks you, it doesn’t just break you – it destroys you, it disintegrates you. It ruins you from the inside, crumbling down everything you’d been so careful to not become so dependent on … I don’t appreciate people saying “he’s just a boy, get over it” because it’s not just the boy, it’s what he brings about. I won’t be able to understand why God made it so that one person has the capacity to complete us but we still meet those who are almost the exact match to our missing jigsaw piece, even let them test their compatibility, let them wedge themselves into that space even though it is not a perfect match, but it is decent so we settle. But decent isn’t perfect, it isn’t good enough, so we are left exposed. We go through a lot in the name of love because it provides feelings and sensations like no other has ever been able to recreate. I know why girls take so much shit from their lovers. It’s very easy to say “if I were her, I’d leave”, hey, I say it all the time but anyone who reads this will say the exact same thing and wonder why I didn’t just get out intact but how could I? Love is everything yet life would be so much easier without it.”

I spend a lot of time on public transport, you know this. If I don’t have a book in my hands, it’s because I think it’s time to do some mind wandering. This is the book I’m reading right now.

Excuse the condition of the book. I do this to a lot of my books, especially if it’s taking forever to finish. I feel the book, get all cosy with it, it’s bound to suffer in the process.

It’s about four people, in Paris, in the seventies, all entwined by knowing one or the other, all affected by the “breakout” of homosexuality and AIDS in France. I picked it up in Waterstones for £2, I think. It’s heavily philosophical but slow and steady wins the race. Just trying something new.

Anywho, when I daydream, I daydream hard. Things that haven’t happened yet, things that might never happen, things that I hope to happen: I am a self-proclaimed dreamer. Your imagination is the only happy thing, really. It is what you make it and I try to make it… exciting. I conjure up things that are supposed to be the Universe’s surprises to me, the turtle out of the sky but no, I foreshadow so much, it’s very unlikely that anything will ever be able to surprise me because, I’m simply on it. (Note, this is untrue. I’ve tried to imagine what meeting Beyoncé would be like but never did I imagine what meeting Danny Dyer, best known for his portrayal as Mick Carter in EastEnders, would be like. My hand was quaking, I think I experienced hyperventilation for the first time but boy, did that man smell good. Damn.)

I think about who I could be, think about where my life is going and what it holds, whether the morals I have laid out for myself still hold true and whether they can still hold.

I think about how my academic life took the biggest U-turn ever and I wonder what I’m actually doing. But, a memory crops up. I remember saying I wouldn’t want to be a dentist forever, I’d much rather go into research and be the brains behind something innovative. Well, look at me now. I’m doing a degree that is almost entirely based on research and who knows, I could be the one. I don’t know what for but it could be me.

Some days, I think about what it’s like to be that girl who can tweet her opinion on an album and not sound like a total fake, I know half of you are like what is she talking about, can she even understand what rap is? I want to have a gazillion followers who retweet whatever I come up with because it’s utter genius.

I think about sex, as you do. I think about what it’s been like so far, why it’s such a big deal, how necessary it is, how it hurt, how it’s the best thing you and another human being, that you love, can physically do together. Stop squirming, it’ll happen to you soon enough.

I think about how odd different cultures are, how unwilling people are to break free from their groups and integrate. I crave knowledge, it is the very thing that keeps me going. Every day I learn something new, I want to grow mentally and that involves mixing. Why stagnate and continuously stick to the plain old, same old that will eventually, turn your brain to mush? My best friend is an Indian Muslim. I have friends who are Sikhs, Hindus, Christians, atheists, barely there Christians, from all four corners of this globe. The other day, I was thinking about the number of languages I can say hello in: 10 and counting. I am a citizen of the world, why wouldn’t I want to be connected to it in every way possible?

I think about my own faith and how I’ve barely scratched the surface in my journey with God. I think of all the questions I have and how, one day, I will be satisfied. I think about how people see the God in me and whether I am utilising the talents given to me to His standard, I suppose. Even though I don’t use this blog to shove Christianity down your throats, I think I’m doing something positive. All I’ve ever wanted to do, for as long as I can remember, is to impact a life, in any way. Be it significant, insignificant, monumentally, for a millisecond or for eternity, I want to be the cause behind an emotional response in a person. I want to be the catalyst to something in someone and I honestly think God put this blog upon my heart to help me fulfil this nugget that seems to be the driving force behind every little thing I do.

I think about the day when every negative –ism of this world will not exist, when people will open their eyes and realise how stupid it is to have a hatred towards another human being. I mean, we are all human beings, aren’t we? Jeez.

I’m turning into Martin Luther King Jr. I guess we all have a little MLK in us all.

Mini Rant of the Week

There’s been this Instagram screenshot of a woman breastfeeding her child circulating on Twitter that, obviously, has people talking but they are, obviously, talking for all the wrong reasons. Why is nudity such a big deal to people when it’s not directly benefiting them? If it was porn, God knows this wouldn’t be an issue but the second a woman captures a moment that is as natural and as necessary as the air we breathe, it’s the biggest sin. I have seen opinions like “was that really necessary?” or “so is this ok now?” and “why would she share that?” and I’m just over here wondering what demon has descended upon all these useless people. It is a woman. Feeding her child. Why the fuck is this something that people even care about? You were all BREASTFED. What do you think breasts are for? To be stared at? For decoration? To be fondled at night during foreplay? They are fundamental biological tools given to women to provide all the necessary nutritional building blocks to babies. If people find a woman feeding her child insulting, God help us all. It’s things like this that make me want to give up on humanity, honestly.

To sigh is a release. I’m always sighing, it’s a fundamental method of me showing emotion. This is what makes me sigh.

Going into Superdrug knowing you only need pads but then you see your deodorant is suddenly half price and and there’s a brand new Impulse body spray on display and your purse is 10,000 km deep in your backpack so you involuntarily start playing Jenga with all the crap in your arms. You lose the game, obviously.

Walking into one of your lecture theatres and being whacked in the face by the realisation that 90% of the people in there don’t want to be your friend, they want to crush you academically. Oh, and the simply repulsive scent of sweat. Jeez.

Good sex. Like, duh.

Bad sex.

No sex at all.

Sex, generally. Just leads to so much unnecessary strain on the mind, let alone the body.

Being single but good things come to those who wait.

One of your earphones stop working and you’ve got two train journeys to endure. Lopsided audio stimulation is not fun.

When he/she looks like a solid 7.5 but he/she opens their mouth and you wonder why you’re still in his/her presence at all. I could squeeze more intellect out of a rock.

When he’s almost, marginally, nearly incomprehensibly ideal but he’s too much and too little in every single department and there’s no amount of refinery that could change any of it.

Looking at your phone after 5 hours of not touching it only to confirm what you already knew: no one thought about you for a whole 5 hours.

Smelling something or hearing something that mentally sends you back to a place that meant everything once before but does nothing but irritate/sadden you when you’re stimulated by it.

Realising this is your last week of university before the ‘incessant studying, late nights in the library, crying over exams’ games begin.

Having so many things that you want to do whilst having so many things that you have to do and just taking a second to realise that all these things are under your control yet you still feel as if you have no say over any of it. If that doesn’t kickstart an existential crisis within you, I don’t know what will.

Wondering why everything you want and actually need is so damn expensive.

Ordering something off the Internet, having this moment of childish excitement as it finally arrives at your doorstep, only for it to look nothing as you envisioned.

People not getting who/what you’re talking about when you’re explaining it in the simplest way you could possibly muster.

Truly appreciating how earth-shatteringly necessary your mum is; acknowledging harder than ever how amazing she is and how life simply wouldn’t be without her.

Spending hours cooking all by yourself and seeing it all on the dining room table, looking totally edible and smelling too good to be true.

Becoming slightly frustrated in your inability to convey the same amount of sass that outpours in your blog posts into 140 characters on Twitter.

Sighing doesn’t always have to be sad. You just haven’t sighed in a good way yet if you think it’s only an outward expression of fedupness. It’s magical, I know this. Trust me on this. You haven’t lived until you’ve had that good sigh.

Quote of the Week

“Most people are searching for happiness outside of themselves. That’s a fundamental mistake. Happiness is something you are, and it comes from the way you think.”

Have an amazeballs week & experience the awesomeness of an amazeballs sigh.

Oh, guys, if you haven’t already, you can subscribe to this blog so you get emails whenever I post something. I think it’s a good idea if you’re not on twitter as often as I am. Please and thank you. Just put your email in the box at the top right of this web page.

Like this:

This is pretty long, just thought I’d warn you. It’s almost like an essay. Just my inner humanities student popping out, as you’ll be able to tell soon enough. Get comfy, get a cup of tea and try to understand what I’m trying to talking about.

Being on the internet at around 1 AM has never been a good idea, especially if you’re half asleep but too lazy to transfer yourself to bed but nonetheless, everything happens for a reason. I was half-heartedly scrolling through my tumblr dashboard when I came across this gif photoset. It was then that I realised the Universe was trying to get me to talk about something in particular instead of what I had originally planned to write about this week. I want to talk (or more appropriately, ask) about why life is so seemingly hard for a woman, anywhere and it seems, at any given time.

Friday: I was on the train home, reading the Evening Standard (it’s a newspaper) and there were these horrific pictures of these women who had been facially deformed by acid attacks, tucked away in the middle section of the paper next to an advert for something meaningless. There was a less than 200-word article attached to the pictures, explaining how a former-NHS doctor had gathered £50,000 to travel to Pakistan and perform facial reconstruction on these women out of the goodness of his heart. The article went on to explain how sulphuric acid is as cheap as 15p in Pakistan and why the women were attacked: out of jealousy; out of spite for rejecting a marriage proposal. I was mortified to say the least.

Saturday: I found out that one of the girls I went to primary school with got married. There’s something about marrying young that unnerves me nowadays. At one point, it was all I could think about: I would daydream and wish I could get married that very second because marriage seemed to be the solution to everything. But now, I think, I’m only now just truly beginning to understand who I am and creating, or better yet, discovering my identity. If I were to get married, how would I know who I really am? How could anybody really know who they are if they get married at such a young age? Do you understand my logic or am I just being difficult?

Anyway, I was showing my mum the pictures of the wedding and from there, we started talking about marriage itself. You always hear a lot of wives saying “marriage isn’t easy, it takes a lot of work, it’s all about compromise, you have to keep your husband happy and interested” and I’m sure most of you have seen how your mothers are with your fathers. Well, I started to ask my mum what it was really all about. I asked her if I would have to change or conform my personality, my being, in order to live a happily married life and she told me “No way. You have to hold on to your identity, you cannot become someone else, how could you expect to last long if you had to play a different person every single day?”

And naturally, I started thinking. It wasn’t until I saw that photoset that my thoughts really began to accumulate. Maybe this is just an African thing, no, a Nigerian thing, but wives are expected to:

Know how to cook.

Know how to clean.

Pop them babies on demand but finding out you’re pregnant when it wasn’t planned is entirely your fault.

A career? What the hell is a career?

Cater to her husband in every way possible. Keep him happy. Keep him satisfied. Keep him interested. If he wanders, it has to be your fault.

Keep yourself together, you are someone’s permanent arm candy now.

It’s just how we’re raised, it’s what we see and what we hear, it’s what is expected.

But, I must ask, why is this expected of me? Why should I have to be the chef, the maid, the baby boomer, the housewife, the walking beauty salon just to keep a marriage functioning? Why should I have to alter my body’s hormonal chemistry to ensure the sex feels “good” as opposed to a man simply putting on a damn piece of rubber? Why should I have to be physically destroyed all because I won’t marry you? Why does my life have to be so hard just to keep a man happy? Who comes up with these things? It’s all down to something we know as gender roles.

It baffles me how unjust the little things of this world are, even on a social, day-to-day level. A boy can bang all the girls from here to China because “boys will be boys” but a girl can lose her virginity and be diminished in an instant. A girl could choose to not have sex until she’s married or until she’s 100% sure she knows what she’s doing but she can be called a prude and uptight for something that has absolutely nothing to do with anyone else but herself. Girls are expected to be homely and want to stay at home so it’s almost a natural response to see a woman who has never been married, never had any kids but has an amazing career and a beautiful legacy and call her selfish or to say she doesn’t have her priorities straight but if a man does it, it’s totally fine. Do you see what I mean though? Even on a musical level, Beyoncé addresses her sexuality on her self-titled album and all hell broke loose but these useless men can scream about bad bitches and f*cking women on a daily and be praised for it and have the balls to call that trash music? Why does having a penis ensure such an easy ride in life when a vagina is what brought you here in the first place?

You might argue and say it is fundamentally so, women just have to be that way, women have to serve, they have to be submissive, that is what they’re there for. You could say our bodies are biologically designed to be nurturing and delicate so we must depend on another man to exist. It’s fine if you want to live your life that way but all I’m asking is, why is this so in the first place and why is it such a bad thing if a woman doesn’t want to be all these things?

I guess this is why I’d make a good scientist, I like to ask questions, as you can see. And maybe in 10 years’ time, when I’m blissfully married and my husband irons our clothes whilst I cook our dinner; runs errands whilst I look through this blog, I can answer all these questions because somehow and some miraculous way, all will be right with the world and women will finally be given the absolute respect and reverence and undiminished equality that we so absolutely deserve.

Even I don’t know why I feel so strongly when it comes to things like marriage because, hey, I’m still young and I do want to get married, it is an ambition of mine, it’s not what I live for but it is something I want. As long as it’s a partnership not a domination. I’m pretty sure I’ve scared off a reasonable chunk of potential suitors because what boy doesn’t get scared shitless when marriage is mentioned let alone by someone who is as strongly-voiced as I seem to be?

Regardless, I will get married in the fairly distant future to someone who will see the world through the same kaleidoscope glasses as I. I’m only being enthusiastically observant and sharing my question-fuelled, highly confused perspective.

A note to my future husband: you’ll never be bored, let me just leave it as that.

If I could come back to this world, knowing and not knowing what I do now, and have a choice of being a man or a woman, I would be a woman every single time. Without women, the world wouldn’t turn, simple as that.

Did anyone notice that I managed to talk about all of this without mentioning the single word that makes everyone run for the hills? I’m talking about the ultimate f bomb – feminism.

My maternal grandmother has a bitter kola addiction. She pops them in her mouth like Skittles. Whenever I’m at her house in Lagos, she always has a handful by her side at all times. When she’s on the move, she has a few stashed in her hand bag. She’s a very cultured woman, don’t get me wrong but she’s indigenously invested simultaneously. She uses chewing sticks even though she brushes her teeth with a toothbrush in the mornings. She likes to sit on the floor and sift through melon seeds (egusi, if you’re about it) even though you can get them cleaned and safe to cook from the shops anyway. My mum always nags her to give up the kola as it’s “mashing up her teeth and God knows what else” but my grandma always replies with “it’s what’s going to kill you that you want to eat” (She says it in Yoruba but that’s the direct-ish translation).

I was in my home, being mindlessly vacant when I had an epiphany. Okay, maybe not an epiphany but a realisation. You know when something just clicks?

I think everyone has or has had or will have that person or that thing that you want to keep around even though deep down, you know there isn’t a plausible future for either of you. You know that this thing or this person has been accompanied with a million and one warning signals, people left right and centre have been yelling “He/She/It is no good for you! Run, b*tch, RUN!” but you’ve just been there, wondering what the hell the fuss was about. You’re the one going “But, look at how cute they are. Look at how happy they make me. Can’t you see this smile? This wasn’t there before, you know this!” You justify the bullshit they’ve brought about for the moments of delight they’ve also brought about. He/she/it is what you want to eat despite the fact that he/she/it is no good for you. But then, the penny absolutely causes an outright explosion as it drops. Everything finally makes sense. Nothing necessarily has to offset this lucidity but when you notice what’s going on, you finally see that everyone screaming at you to run just had your best interest at heart.

Honesty hour, remember my post 2 weeks ago where I mentioned falling in love? I’m not going to say “I’ve seen the light, I wasn’t in love!” because that would be lying but what I will say is I know that I am not ending up with him. You know sometimes, you think you and a particular someone will drift in and out of whatever it is you guys are calling it nowadays (a relationship? A thing?) but ultimately become that couple who says “we’ve weathered hell and high waters but we made it. We ended up together”. But I KNOW that isn’t happening. I don’t know what made me have this eye opener but I’ve had it and there’s going back.

It feels good to finally be on the same wavelength as my brain and my heart. Cohesion is powerful. Cohesion is beautiful. You don’t feel like anything is lacking, you don’t see yourself surrounded by a lifetime’s supply of Ben & Jerry’s whilst Katy Perry’s “The One That Got Away” is vigorously being repeated in the background of your miserable existence.

I’m making a pre-New Year’s resolution to myself: I’m going to be real. I’m going to be honest and transparent with myself and with my audience because there’s no integrity or necessity in faking it. I almost wrote a blog post on 20 facts about Christmas that I was prepared to spend my Sunday night researching but hey, looks like being open was the better option. The whole point of this blog is to see how I grow and in order for there to be growth, I have to be real. Like, aggressively real. “Jesus, take the wheel” has become my saying and when I say it, I actually do mean it but today, Jesus has really taken it. Keep steering, Lord. Keep steering.

Mini Rant of the Week: I don’t think the fact that I’m in university has sunk in for a lot of people including my mother. This morning, I was getting ready to leave my house and I was tying my shoelaces on my brand new Huaraches (I know, I was sucked in to the phenomenon that is Nike and I did what almost every newly inducted student does, I spent a small fortune on a pair of trainers. But they’re so damn comfortable) and my mum said “hmm, be prepared for the flood of compliments as you walk into college today.” Quickly, I said “I’m not going to college, I’m a university student” because hey, everyone has a slip of tongue every now and again so it could have been an honest mistake. But then you know what my mother said? She said “yeah, whatever.” Has there been some role reversal that I’m not aware of or since when has my mother giving me stage 2 oh-my-gosh-mum-leave-me-alone attitude become a thing?! Fine, I find myself making that mistake too, I say I’m going to college but then I mentally bite myself and grind “no, you’re going to university” into my cerebellum. Well, I know what’s going to solve this mistake everyone keeps making one too many times. I’m moving out next year. Simple.